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Following up on a recent post about the promise of Using Student Surveys to Evaluate Teachers using a more holistic definition of a teacher’s valued added, I just read a chapter written by Ronald Ferguson — the creator of the Tripod student survey instrument and Tripod’s lead researcher — and written along with Charlotte Danielson — the creator of the Framework for Teaching and founder of The Danielson Group (see a prior post about this instrument here). Both instruments are “research-based,” both are used nationally and internationally, both are (increasingly being) used as key indicators to evaluate teachers across the U.S., and both were used throughout the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s ($43 million worth of) Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) studies.

The chapter titled, “How Framework for Teaching and Tripod 7Cs Evidence Distinguish Key Components of Effective Teaching,” was recently published in a book all about the MET studies, titled “Designing Teacher Evaluation Systems: New Guidance from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project” written by Thomas Kane, Kerri Kerr, and Robert Pianta. The chapter is about whether and how data derived via the Tripod student survey instrument (i.e., as built on 7Cs: challenging students, control of the classroom, teacher caring, teachers confer with students, teachers captivate their students, teachers clarify difficult concepts, teachers consolidate students’ concerns) align with the data derived via Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, to collectively capture teacher effectiveness.

Another purpose for this chapter is to examine how both indicators also align with teacher level-value-added. Ferguson (and Danielson) find that:

• Their two measures (i.e., the Tripod and the Framework for Teaching) are more reliable (and likely more valid) than value-added measures. The over-time, teacher-level classroom correlations, cited in this chapter, are r = 0.38 for value-added (which is comparable with the correlations noted in plentiful studies elsewhere), r = 0.42 for the Danielson Framework, and r = 0.61 for the Tripod student survey component. These “clear correlations,” while not strong particularly in terms of value-added, do indicate there is some common signal that the indicators are capturing, some stronger than the others (as should be obvious given the above numbers).
• Contrary to what some (softies) might think, classroom management, not caring (i.e., the extent to which teachers care about their students and what their students learn and achieve), is the strongest predictor of a teachers’ value-added. However, the correlation (i.e., the strongest of the bunch) is still quite “weak” at an approximate r = 0.26, even though it is statistically significant. Caring, rather, is the strongest predictor of whether students are happy in their classrooms with their teachers.
• In terms of “predicting” teacher-level value-added, and of the aforementioned 7Cs, the things that also matter “most” next to classroom management (although none of the coefficients are as strong as we might expect [i.e., r < 0.26]) include: the extent to which teachers challenge their students and have control over their classrooms.
• Value-added in general is more highly correlated with teachers at the extremes in terms of their student survey and observational composite indicators.

In the end, while the authors of this chapter do not disclose the actual correlations between their two measures and value-added, specifically (although from the appendix one can infer that the correlation between value-added and Tripod output is around r = 0.45 as based on an unadjusted r-squared), and I should mention this is a HUGE shortcoming of this chapter (one that would not have passed peer review should this chapter have been submitted to a journal for publication), the authors do mention that “the conceptual overlap between the frameworks is substantial and that empirical patterns in the data show similarities.” Unfortunately again, however, they do not quantify the strength of said “similarities.” This only leaves us to assume that since they were not reported the actual strength of the similarities empirically observed between was likely low (as is also evidenced in many other studies, although not as often with student survey indicators as opposed to observational indicators.)

The final conclusion the authors of this chapter make is that educators “cross-walk” the two frameworks (i.e., the Tripod and the Danielson Framework) and use both frameworks when reflecting on teaching. I must say I’m concerned about these recommendations, as well, mainly given this recommendation will cost states and districts more $$$, and the returns or “added value” (using the grandest definition of this term) of doing so and engaging in such an approach does not have the necessary evidence I would say one might use to adequately justify such recommendations.